The green bus that was parked at the old city hall Thursday morning added 165 more people to the 60,000 who now know a little more about "the least known chapter" of American history in World War II.

From 9 a.m. until just after noon, the 165 boarded the converted school bus to see, hear and read about "Vanished: German-American Civilian Internment 1941-48."

Part of what they learned came from a "Dateline NBC" report aired in 1994, which interviewed some of those who were interned by the U.S. government during World War II, and some for a few years after it ended.

Wilbert "Wib" Henkel, left, was among those who visited a converted school bus Thursday morning to learn about German-American civilian internment during World War II. With him is Michael Luick-Thrams, executive director of TRACES Center for History and Culture in St. Paul, Minn. The "bus-eum" has exhibits about what has been called "the least known chapter" of American history in that war.

Driving the bus, which went to Bloomington for an afternoon parking, was Michael Luick-Thrams, executive director of TRACES Center for History and Culture (www.traces.org), a museum in St. Paul, Minn., that tells about "people from the Midwest and Germany and Austria who encountered each other during World War II," including prisoners of war in both Germany and the United States.

But the bus that came to Pontiac tells about civilians, 15,000 of them. Their detainment in camps, while far less known than the internment of Japanese-Americans in the West during the war, is documented, both inside and on the outside of the bus, with narrative texts, photographs, artifacts and multimedia. The "Dateline" report is shown in a 21-seat theater area at the back of the bus.

Luick-Thrams said that the internees included 4,058 forcibly removed from Latin America, with no lawyers or trials afforded them, yet some of them kept behind barbed wire until 1948. "We have to remember that some of these people were German Jews who fled the Nazis, and it's been documented that they were put in camps like in North Dakota and Wisconsin, and because they didn't have lawyers or trials, they didn't get out very quickly, either," he said in answering a question about the bus-eum.

His research began with central European Jews who were fleeing the Nazis and came to Iowa. From 1939-43, 186 refugees came to Scattergood Hostel, a Quaker boarding school near Iowa City. He also interviewed 55 German soldiers who had been POWs in the Upper Midwest, and five dozen Midwest soldiers and airmen about their POW experiences. All those stories are told at the museum in St. Paul. All have to do with the period 1933-48.

The people who came to Scattergood settled in cities including Moline, Eureka, Danville and Chicago.

"The most common (comment) in all the stops is, 'Oh, I didn't know about this'. And that's one of the reasons why we have our exhibit," Luick-Thrams said. "We've had over 60,000 people through our two buses," the other telling about Midwest soldiers and airmen in German camps. Of the 60,000, Luick-Thrams estimates 59,500 didn't know about the German-American internees "until we came along."

Two of them were George and Germaine Knudsen, of rural Pontiac, who were among those who watched the "Dateline" segment.

Knudsen, a veteran and a member of the Livingston County Board, said he had not not been familiar with the German-American internment but that all America should become so, to help understand why it happened. She noted that, as a child in South Streator, she was aware of a small internment camp for German POWs, but that "somehow this piece of history (the civilian internment) became lost." She said she'd like to go to the site of the camp in Crystal City, Texas, that was featured in the "Dateline" story. "I'd like to see that."

Another veteran who learned about the internment stood outside the bus most of the time. George Pouliot, the treasurer of the war museum, served as greeter, including to classes from Pontiac Township High School and Graymont Grade School who were bused to the bus-eum and the war museum Thursday morning.

"It's something that I think should have been told long ago. I never knew this had happened," said Pouliot, who knew about the internment of Japanese-Americans and was a high-speed radio operator in Yokohama while in the Army during the Korean War. He noted items on the bus about people taken from Guatemala and other places, and how some people were taken from their homes in Milwaukee by the FBI at 3 a.m.

"It's hard to understand how this could happen," Pouliot said of the internment.

Others who watched the "Dateline" piece included Ellie Alexander and her husband and father. Like the reporter who interviewed her, she conceded she knew little about the internment, and she'd like to have the bus-eum or the one about the Midwesterners who were POWS in town again, for both personal and professional reasons.

In addition to giving other residents a chance to learn more about the subject, Alexander, Pontiac's tourism director, said she'd like to have one of the bus-eums return, with it publicized further in advance.

When she learned the bus-eum was coming to town, she said, she thought "Why did I not know any of this?"

"It saddens me, really, to see this has happened," and she noted that relatives on her mother's side of her family theoretically could have been among those interned because of their German history.

About 120 U.S. history students from PTHS visited the war museum or the bus Thursday. Teacher Gene Burnett said that the internment of Japanese-Americans is included in textbooks used in Illinois, and is in the state's learning standards curriculum. The German-American internment is not.

Luick-Thrams said that because his museum and bus-eums are a "money-losing, non-profit educational foundation," they don't talk about the present. "But certainly there are stories to be learned for the present," he said. "If this can happen during a good war, what can happen during a bad war?"